Compare and Contrast
by Lucky Dice Kirby
Summary: ‹topher•claire› Topher remembers how she used to be. ‹written for non-canon challenge at whedonland.›


Topher remembers how she used to be. Remembers the brightness in her smile, the way she never stood still, was always moving. Sometimes the remembering makes him happy, and sometimes he wishes he could forget. He wishes he could wipe it away, like he wipes away the memories of the Dolls, but he knows he can't. She's dead anyway, but he can pretend that it isn't really true, as long as he remembers her.

xxx

She's so different, now. He had created Dr. Saunders to be as little like her as he could. It'd be easier, he'd reasoned, easier to let go, but he was wrong. It doesn't help at all. Her real personality is glaringly obvious in its absence, makes her stand out even more to him. Several times, he almost caves and changes the imprint. But how would he explain that to Adelle? And there are people here who don't know she's a Doll. People like Boyd, and Topher doesn't want to think of how he'd react if he knew. He doesn't want to lose his only friend.

It would never be the same, anyway.

Even though they're so different, sometimes he looks at her, and they're exactly the same. It's odd. But sometimes Claire does something, or says something, and Topher will think, she would have done that. She would have said that. And he wonders, is she really gone?

Of course she is. But still. Topher wonders, and he wishes.

xxx

She always used to love salmon. Claire always has it, when the kitchen makes it, and he didn't program that in, maybe…?

All he's doing is making himself miserable, by remembering, but he can't seem to stop.

It's always been like this, even when she was still Whiskey. Any scrap of personality someone has becomes glaringly obvious if it's the only bit there.

xxx

As a rule, she had never been big on flowers, but she had always had a thing for lilies. The big kind, that got pollen everywhere if you so much as came within an inch of touching them. Topher was allergic as hell, but he used to buy them for her on her birthday anyway, and they'd sit and play a marathon gaming session with them on the table.

Topher sees her painting, sometimes, when he goes to get an Active he needs to imprint, and all he ever sees her draw are fields and fields of lilies.

They don't have lilies in the Dollhouse. Topher seems to keep forgetting to mention the anomaly in his reports, and one or two of Whiskey's paintings have somehow been relocated to one of his files. The pitfalls of disorganization.

xxx

She comes back from an engagement, slut-red lipstick and spiky high-heeled boots and lots and lots of leather. Those are common enough, and so Topher doesn't think much of it as he tells her to get in the chair, not really paying attention.

She (and Topher can't remember what her name is this time, something biblical like Eve or Lilith) doesn't, though. She looks him up and down and says, "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"

Topher blinks at her. "No," he says. "Now, about that treatment…"

She grabs him and shoves him into the chair and he only gets a moment of hurt pride at the fact that the sexy leather girl gets to be stronger than him, before he has bigger things to worry about because she's straddling his hips and kissing him. Really kissing him, with teeth and tongue and the whole nine yards. Topher's hands are knotted in her hair and he's not exactly sure when that happened, but the last time he kissed someone was years ago, it was--

--it was her.

She hadn't kissed anything like this at all.

Topher pushes her off and stand up, and tries not to watch her as she licks her lips salaciously and smirks at him.

"Treatment," he manages to say, after a beat. It comes out a little more shaky than he would have liked. He points at the chair and turns to the console.

"Guess not, then," she says as the chair tips back. "But I think I'd like to. Hey, after this, maybe--" The chair cuts her off.

"Did I fall asleep?"

Topher wipes the lipstick off his face with his sleeve, and says, "For a little while."


End file.
